The Crow: Twin Beaks
by Akasha Drake
Summary: A couple dies...and they both come back for revenge...and each other. Rated for violence, and possible later situations. Put here because there's no longer a Crow:Stairway to Heaven section


The Crow: Twin Beaks

January 12th 2003

Midland, Tx

12:30 AM

Jameson Crowley and his girlfriend Maria were walking home in the early hours of the morning after a late night of working together when the worst happened. A Hispanic young man with a gun, drunk and in the mood for fun, decided he was going to stop them. Two minutes after he did, both Jameson and Maria were dead, shot for no reason other than they were walking home, and in love. This was not the end, of course, but the beginning.

Jameson Crowley stopped typing and mused about that day. He was an amateur writer as well as a cashier at a local fast food place, and that was how he had met Maria. They had arrived at a seminar at the local college on writing and a year later, had ended up going to their homes in the same neighborhood, working at the same place at the same times not long afterwards. A year later, they had been in love when they were killed. Then, he spoke, not realizing the figure behind him was sitting up with her eyes open. "That was the day we both learned that death isn't as final as we once thought, wasn't it?" he asked himself softly

The last thing he expected was to hear Maria's answer. "Yes, thanks to a pair of twin beaks stuck into our deaths. What was it we were told when we were looking for answers?"

James as Maria called him grinned. "People used to believe that crows carried the souls of the dead to the Land of the Dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a soul cannot rest. Then, sometimes, just sometimes a crow can bring the soul back, to put things right"

Maria nodded slowly. "We were just lucky we both qualified, right?"

James nodded. "Yes, so that when we had found him, and he had paid, we could continue from where we left off," he replied, looking over at where the two crow stood calmly on their matching stands, resting calmly as they had since the events of those days now a year in the past.

January 11th, 2001

Midland, Tx

3:30 AM

James looked over at the love of his life with a slow smile. "Maria, my heart, I have to ask you now, before I lose my nerve," he commented hopefully.

Maria looked back, stopping her walk down the street. "Yes, my love? What is is you want t0o ask?"

James looked back with a smile, stopping as well, one hand in his right pocket. He slowly pulled the hand out, a ring box in it, pausing to open the box, then turning it to face her, revealing a beautiful diamond engagement ring He grinned at her gasp of pleasure, then asked his question. "Maria, my heart, my soul, will you marry me?"

Maria was just opening her mouth to answer, when a voice spoke out of the darkness nearby. "Very nice, ese. Let's have the ring, the watch, and the girl, and we'll have a celebration for the two of you."

Maria grew silent, understanding what the Hispanic male the voice belonged to had in mind. Her boyfriend, however, did not stay silent at this.

"Not a chance, buster," he said. "You can have the watch, but the other things, I keep."

This was met by a mask of drunken rage, and the tightening of the man's finger on the gun they could now see he held. Both Jameson and Maria saw it clearly by the light of the muzzle flash, though the pain that followed obscured any more sights from their minds before the blackness overwhelmed them.

The Land of the Dead

Indeterminate

The next thing each knew, they were in a forest, a crow sitting on a limb in front of each of them. Not that they knew this, for they each saw only the crow and the bridge beyond it. Jameson, he frowned, but walked over to the crow, frowning deeper as the crow flew away to land a few feet away on a rail of the wood and rope bridge. Then, a voice he hadn't heard in years, the voice of his late, unlamented father spoke as he followed the crow to the middle of the bridge. "Failed again, boy! Now you're dead, and once you cross this bridge, you never go back to your pretty little girl."

At that, he paused, turning to the rail and jumping onto it. Then, he leapt from the bridge, seeing only the flash of light from the rift between worlds he fell into from the bridge, his anger and grief filling him as it happened. He never saw the crow following him though, or his wife do the same on another bridge…if it was another bridge at all.

_Maria laughed at this, now knowing the answer to a question she had asked for over a year. Then, Jameson moved aside, and Maria took his place for her side of the story._

Maria saw the crow with her eyes even as had her husband, but something in her prompted her to follow it onto the bridge without it's urging. Then, even as Jameson had, she heard a voice which stopped her in her tracks at the middle of the bridge. But in her case, it was the beloved voice of her mother, dead four years before her daughter, almost to the day. "Not yet, Maria," she said. "You can go back if you hurry, go back to your love and life," she said softly. "Just let the pain and love fill you, and jump."

At that, Maria nodded, and turned to the chasm beneath her. Without a pause, she leapt from the bridge, hearing the crow caw as she did, feeling it's wings behind he as she fell into the light,

_Once she finished her story, she moved to return the true writer to the typewriter for the rest of the story, barring any interjections or side-points she might had._

January 11th, 2002

Midland, Tx

3:30 AM

The two bodies fell to the street from a flash of light in perfect synchronicity, each standing with effort to look at each other, and the crows circling over them. They joined hands, a primitive level of what remained of their awareness aware they cared for each other. Then, as their hands touched, and their bare feet touched the ground they had stood on one year before to the day, they flinched and screamed in agonized reliving of their deaths, and the events leading up to them. After the visions stopped, they looked at each other, and began a loping run that took them to the home Jameson had had a year before. The house was closed up, and looked as abandoned as if no one had been in there for a year. In fact, no one had, as the police sign on the yard attested. It seemed that the place couldn't be sold until ownership was settled, and that wouldn't happen until the case, a case that had been open for a year and showed no signs of closing any time soon, was solved. They stepped into the house with smiles, Maria looking over at him to say only, "Yes, I will marry you as soon as we find the man who killed us."

Jameson picked her up and carried her across his threshold, not noticing the police car less than a block away from the house, it's startled driver spilling his coffee as they did so. All they knew was the impulse which led them upstairs, the same impulse that manifested as they both screamed once more in agony, their faces on fire with pain as thy found themselves undergoing a macabre transformation. Their skin paled, and black marks covered their lips, marking also an Egyptian eye on one eye for each of them, and a simple black circling around the other eye, the right for Jameson, and the left for Maria. They then lost conscious awareness of each other and their surroundings, blacking out.


End file.
